So who would you call the "Teen Titans" of the Marvel Universe?

The question is pretty clear. Going off my thoughts of the the New Warriors in the main marvel there, I started thinking about who what teams in the Marvel Universe would be comparable to the premier Teenage Hero team.

There are the various young X-Men teams (including the original five), the Young Avengers, I suppose The Run Aways, and of course, the New Warriors themselves, but if you were to compare a team to the Titans, who would you choose?

I'm definitely going with the Warriors, even though I know very little about them, and even though the numerous Mutant teams predate them. They just feel like the group that really comes the closest (though many of them were college age, meaning some were in their early twenties).

What say you Tropers?

Well, I don't know a lot about all of those teams. As for the ones I do at least know a bit about, the Young Avengers seem to have gotten their start by younger heroes styling themselves after more established ones, while the Runaways (and the original five X-Men, for that matter) were completely original. Neither of them started out like the Teen Titans did, with a bunch of sidekicks banding together (although they did end up having a lot of original teen heroes).

The Marvel Universe doesn't really have a lot of sidekicks, actually. Bucky is really the only one who comes readily to mind, and he hasn't had that role for years. There's Kate Bishop, but she's more like Clint's partner than anything.

edited 11th Feb '16 4:00:33 PM by KarkatTheDalek

That's true. Marvel isn't much for Teen sidekicks is it.

Hell, thematically, the Young Avengers are closer to the Titans, but they aren't sidekicks in any sense of the word.

Even the more recent crop of teen heroes, Kamala, Sam, and Miles tend to operate independently of their namesakes. In Sam's case, his is dead.

The argument could be made that there really isn't a clean counterpart of the Teen Titan in the Marvel Universe, much like DC really don't have it's own obvious "Fantastic Four" counterpart.

Its pretty obvious that the Doom Patrol is DC's equivalent of the Fantastic Four. The only real difference is that the Doom Patrol are all jerks.

So there's no difference?

I would argue the Young Avengers are the most similar to the Teen Titans. Though, back in the day, the Teen Titans were mostly competing with Uncanny X-Men.

Doom Patrol is really closer to the X Men isn't it, what with the two concepts being really similar (fighting for a world that hates and fears them) having a wheel chair bound leader, and coming out within a few short months of each other (to the point where the gap was so small, it actually killed the possibility of one copying the other since they came out too close together).

The X-men clearly copied the Doom Patrol, the original X-men, not the All New All Different group that had Wolverine, Storm, Thunderbird et all.

I'm not sure why that's such a sore point with Marvel fans. Doom Patrol clearly copied Fantastic Four so it's not as if they have to defend "their" company on any moral ground or anything.

And no, Teen Titans-X-men never made sense to me. Competing for the same demographic? Sure, but otherwise I can't find anything that makes them counterparts. X-men at that point were a semi international team with a common origin centered around a goal that really made none of the core members necessary (as evidenced by the various X-books of differing lineups). The closest thing to a DC Counterpart would probably be The Legion Of Superheroes.

The New Warriors aren't sidekicks but were founded by superheroes who had failed as individuals. They were similar in that they had stigmas to overcome though even then that's mainly the original. The cybernetic reliant depowered mutants rebelling against Interpol incarnation was decidedly not like Teen Titans.

edited 13th Feb '16 4:49:43 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

Comics are written months in advance. Given the lead time, X-Men #1 was completed, though not released, before Doom Patrol hit the newsstands.

Arnold Drake, creator of the Doom Patrol, had this to say:

"...I’ve become more and more convinced that [Stan Lee] knowingly stole The X-Men from The Doom Patrol. Over the years I learned that an awful lot of writers and artists were working surreptitiously between [Marvel and DC]. Therefore from when I first brought the idea into [DC editor] Murray Boltinoff’s office, it would’ve been easy for someone to walk over and hear that [I was] working on a story about a bunch of reluctant superheroes who are led by a man in a wheelchair. So over the years I began to feel that Stan had more lead time than I realized. He may well have had four, five or even six months.” —from Wikipedia's entry on the Doom Patrol.

Coulda happened that way. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that the similarities are a complete coincidence. Who knows?

Wolfman and Perez's New Teen Titans got accused of ripping off Claremont's X-Men quite often (similarities between Jean Gray and Raven, the fact that Perez's rendition of Starfire bore quite a bit of resemblance to Byrne's rendition of Storm, etc. etc.) Wolfman went so far as to play on the perception when he introduced Terra, who he figured fans might think was ripped off from Kitty Pryde. He was clear from the beginning that she was a spy (and petty, vicious, and nasty too), but a lot of fans, at least from the letter columns of the day, still didn't see her final betrayal coming. Guess they thought she'd be "saved" somehow.

People seem to forget that DC used to be a hostile empire in the US comic books that ruthlessly tried to destroy or buy out any and all competitors. Marvel was one of the few companies that actively "fought" them, Stan Lee mocking DC at pretty much every chance given, and DC archetypes being a favorite tear down topic(Gladiator, Blue Marvel, Virtue, Hyperion, Sentry are just aimed at the Superman series, with the former bringing Legion Of Superheroes expies to serve as Phoenix fodder after Chameleon Boy was used in a Legion book to mock Spider-man). Them teaming up to become a two headed scourge of comic books is a development brought upon by bankruptcy scares and buyouts by larger corporations. Till then happened Marvel and DC were ripping off or otherwise creating thinly veiled stand ins of one another constantly. Getting info on the Doom Patrol during its development and jumping on it doesn't seem improbable to me because the same thing is what lead Marvel to create the Fantastic Four when they learned of DC creating a Super Hero team(the Justice Society or whatever).

It's a wonder we don't have a more readily distinguishable "Marvel Teen Titans" group, not that I think the absence of said group is a bad thing. It's wonderful one doesn't exist.

Marvel Comics as we know it is based on The House Stan Lee (okay, and Kirby and Ditko) Built, and Lee really disliked the junior sidekick trope. Teenagers used to start in the Marvel universe as their own heroes (Spider-Man, X-Men), so there never was a superhero child assistant foundation for a Marvel version of the Titans. It's as simple as that.

DC really don't have it's own obvious "Fantastic Four" counterpart.

Actually, it did. It's just three of them died really quick and their Reed Richards became the Cyborg Superman◊.

edited 13th Feb '16 5:46:41 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Well, there was Bucky and Toro (The Flaming Kid) from the All-Winners Squad, but they were only there cuz Cap and the Torch were.

It's funny that Lee didn't like kid heroes, especially given how much Kirby apparently liked them. Simon and Kirby created several kid groups, in the 40's and then again in the 70's.

Lee liked kid heroes, but he just didn't like them as actual sidekicks. Although in a way, the Silver Age Torch kind of was the teen sidekick to the FF originally (and when he and Ben went on their own in... Tales of Suspense, right?... he technically functioned as the Thing's bickering junior sidekick).

The Torch (Johnny Storm) figured in his own solo stories pretty early, didn't he?

edited 14th Feb '16 1:09:50 PM by Robbery

Marvel has never had a stable Titans counterpart, and I think that's a strength.

The thing is, teen superhero teams seem to have a short shelf life. Teenagerdom is such a specific - and specifically short - period of time in someone's life that teen heroes tend to have more problems with Comic-Book Time than adult heroes do. Hence, there's more impetus to age teen heroes into adulthood - but that means that the team books lose either their most iconic members, or their coherency of concept. See the way the Titans gradually turned into an adult heroes team, which, while benefiting from the characters' history as the Titans, became essentially a lesser Justice League.

I don't think it is a coincidence that DC's two books that have had the most disastrous relaunches and difficulty finding new relevancy have been Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes. Even aside from both properties having innumerable headaches caused by continuity ripples, each book has had a long history of awkward ambivalence over whether its protagonists needed to still be teenagers. The Titans had trouble transitioning away from the classic 80's lineup, with multiple lineups that failed to gel. The Legion had multiple reboots attempting to bring back the youth of the characters after they were all aged well into adulthood in the original continuity.

In contrast, Marvel has...basically never had a teen superhero book that lasted for very long as a teen superhero book. The X-Men made the transition into adulthood far more gracefully than any of DC's teen teams. The Runaways and Young Avengers have both "graduated" into the ranks of adult heroes (with Nico, Billy, and Teddy all joining adult Avengers teams, and Kate being seen as an equal to Clint Barton). The New Warriors just petered out as a concept, but were never inextricably tied to being teenagers in the first place.

In short, I think that while teen superhero teams are awesome, it's difficult to maintain them in Comic-Book Time.

Also, to propose an underdeveloped theory: teen superhero teams need to in some way represent current youth culture, and as such characters created for one era's youth culture (such as the Legion for the 60's, or the Titans for the 80's) have more trouble staying relevant to a new era's culture without a flat-out reboot (see: the Titans being adapted to the 00's via the cartoon).

In the 60's and 70's, the Titans tried to tap into youth culture. If you ever read the solo Robin stories from the 70's, you'll find a lot of 70's pop culture angst in them (Robin dealing with campus unrest, with a hippy commune, etc). The 80's Titans did not really try to tap into that; Wolfman and Perez wanted to call that book "The Titans" from the beginning, but DC editorial wanted them to use the Teen Titans, so they compromised (if you can call it that) on the New Teen Titans. They never really play up the "teen" angle at all, except by seldom-referenced fact that 16 year old Changeling (Beast Boy now) had a tutor. The rest of them were college-aged, around 19.

I'd say part of the problem with relaunching both LSH and the Teen Titans has been that both titles have had a pretty significant fandom, but that significant fandom only really exists for specific eras of those books. Once they tried to deviate from the most popular eras, they lost their older fans, and weren't able to do anything interesting enough with their new line-ups to attract new fans. I'd say Peter David's Young Justice solved the problem admirably, for a while, given that it was the original concept of the Teen Titans under a different name, so you didn't have fans of Wolfman's Titans getting irritated that it wasn't "their" team.

edited 21st Feb '16 9:01:53 AM by Robbery

The Legion Of Superheroes only need to be young when they first bring Superboy to the future to solve their crisis. After that crisis is solved and they send superboy back where he belongs, aging should not be an issue. In fact, it should be a plus, so they can get to meet adult Superman.

Of course, how that even works with the post crisis never was Superboy is beyond me...and apparently beyond DC. It was the retcon to Superman that hurt Legion of Superheroes, who are essentially a Superman spin off, more than the ages of the legionaries themselves.

edited 21st Feb '16 11:32:50 AM by IndirectActiveTransport

John Byrne said on numerous occasions that the thing he regretted most about his reboot of Superman was getting rid of Superboy; it just made for too many OTHER things they had to retcon.

A few years before the New 52 the Superman books started floating the idea that Clark had been doing heroic stuff in secret (sans costume) since he was a boy, that the "Kansas Super-Boy" was kind of a midwestern folktale. Geoff Johns had it that Clark operated as Superboy in costume only with the Legion. Johns had it that he remembered these adventure, while (I think) the animated Legion of Super-Heroes had a similar set up, except that they wiped Clark's memory after he went back home. I think either of the above could work with having a young Clark working with the Legion.

If Superman didn't have powers as a teenager, you could just change it so that the Legion took a superhero who did, like Wonder Woman...who incidentally is plagued by similar continuity issues when DC forgot Wonder Girl was supposed to be herself from the past rather than a separate character...Martian Manhunter is probably a workable replacement too. Hell, use Superboy Prime, use Hercules, use Orion. There should be an endless list of super powered beings who probably had powers as teenagers, now that I think of it.

Well, sure, they COULD do that, but none of those characters have anything to do with the Legion (except kinda Martian Manhunter, who in one story from the 80's was shown to still be alive in the 30th century). The Legion is an outgrowth of Silver Age Superman continuity. Crisis on Infinite Earths aside, until the 2000's, they hardly ever had any interaction with any other characters from the present day DC Universe. Besides, DC started ignoring a lot of Byrne's revamping by the late 90's, and were slowly re-introducing a lot of Silver-Age continuity into Superman, so once again, while he was never publicly active as Superboy, he WAS active, and he DID have his powers. There's really no reason he can't maintain his relationship with them. He's kind of the keystone figure of the DCU; some may not like that, but there it is.

Wonder Girl being the young version of Wonder Woman hasn't been canon since the 60's. And yes, Bob Haney's (writer on the 60's Teen Titans) thinking she was a separate character did arise from his, and his editor's, just not thinking to ask the folks in charge of Wonder Woman; the DCU was not a fully cohesive place in the '60's. Wolfman and Perez came up with a perfectly workable origin for Donna in "Who is Donna Troy" from their run on the New Teen Titans (though I did find her later Troia persona and her reworked, non-Wonder Woman related origin to be terribly convoluted; she became a bit of a continuity snarl for awhile).

edited 21st Feb '16 12:41:47 PM by Robbery

As someone who has minimal familiarization with Legion of Superheroes and young Superman, how essential is it that the Legion have any association with young Superman and how difficult would it be to have a Legion of Superheroes where they're a mix of adults and teenagers?

For the first point, the Legion meeting Superman is one of their most well known stories, showing Clark how far his Legacy extends. Mind you, this is more for Clark than is the Legion. So I'd say not very important for them.

I don't know if making them a mix of teens and young adults would work as the youth angle is kind of important. I suppose it is possible to age them up eventually to young adults.

Hope this helps.

Superman isn't necessary. A legendary figure from the past to serve as a Fish out of Water whom they have to hide things about their legacy from or mind wipe is the appeal. It doesn't necessarily have to be Superman, but it seems some people would be angry if it wasn't. I realized Orion can't work though because a plot point in Legion Of Superheroes is that Darkseid has been dead for so long that everyone has forgotten about him.

Anyway, for their Godzilla Threshold period I guess it makes sense that they are teens. I think the reasoning was that there were things they couldn't let adult Superman see and didn't have time to hide from him, but after that, mixing their ages shouldn't be hard at all. In fact there have been plots where, with better preparation, they were able to safely bring adult Superman back to the future for a reunion and recruitment is a big part of their plots anyway.

edited 22nd Feb '16 8:18:08 AM by IndirectActiveTransport